1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to website usage tracking, and more specifically to improved techniques for capturing and presenting site visitation path data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Website providers often wish to collect data that describes usage and visitation patterns for their websites and for individual web pages within the sites. Such information can be extremely valuable in developing usage statistics for various purposes, including for example estimating server load, determining advertising rates, identifying areas of websites that are in need of redesign, and the like.
When surfing the Web using a browser such as Internet Explorer (available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.), users have the ability to move from one page to another by various means, such as: clicking on links within pages; typing in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs); clicking on dedicated buttons in the browser (such as Back, Forward, and Home); or selecting from a list of favorites. In addition, users can open and close new browser windows at will. As users of web browsers have grown more sophisticated over the years, they have become increasingly adept at such navigation. Furthermore, as connection speeds have increased, users have become less hesitant to click on links at will, and then back up if the information presented by the link is not of interest or is of merely momentary interest.
As a result, users often take a somewhat wandering approach through pages of a website, including side trips and tangents. The user eventually reaches the end of a theoretically linear path of pages, but may have visited some tangential pages along the way. Such tangential pages may be part of the same web domain as the linear path, or they may be external to that domain.
For example, in performing a somewhat linear task such as purchasing an item from an online retailer, there are a series of steps that are generally represented by web pages: searching for the desired item; selecting the item by putting it in a shopping cart; activating a checkout function; providing shipping and billing information; and indicating final approval. However, along the way, the user may visit some tangential pages. For example, he or she may check the shipping costs on item; or he or she may check the price of the item at a competitor's page; or he or she may, for whatever reason, check the weather forecast. The linear path of pages is eventually visited, in a discernable sequence; these tangential pages are merely momentary distractions along the way.
In many contexts, website administrators are interested in analyzing the site visitation paths of users of their websites. Visitation to the tangential pages may be of little or no interest to such administrators; alternatively, administrators may be interested in certain tangents but not others. What is needed, therefore, is a system that allows website administrators to specify which pages are of particular interest, so that other pages are ignored when performing site path capture and analysis. What is further needed is a system that captures and analyzes site path information based on the configuration options selected by the website administrator, and which is capable of ignoring visits to pages that are of no interest to the administrator. What is further needed is a system and method for presenting site visitation path data to an administrator in a graphical, easy-to-understand manner.